Creative facilitator Mary Robson welcomes participants to our consultation workshop in Durham.
Last year over seventy voice-hearers, family members and health professionals took part in a consultation designed to test the prototype version of our new website, Understanding Voices (UV). Whether it was through an online survey or attending one of our workshops, their contribution was essential to the development of the site. Many thanks again to everyone who contributed for sharing their thoughts and feedback so generously.
Throughout the consultation, lots of people told us that the prototype site would benefit from some changes, such as:
- Including more multimedia resources
- Making the language more accessible in places
- Including sections on medication and the links between voice-hearing, spirituality and creativity
- Practical information on disclosure and how to manage voices at work, school or University
We responded by:
- Commissioning five digital stories, a new animation on ‘What is hearing voices?’, and a series of audio recordings on talking about voices with family, friends, employers and education providers
- Adding sections on ‘Medication’, ‘Voices and spirituality’, ‘Voices and creativity’, ‘Talking about voices’ and ‘Voices at work or while studying’.
- Taking out some of the jargon and using a more conversational tone wherever we could
If you’d like to find out more about the feedback we received at the prototype testing and how the UV team responded, you can see the information here.
Sticky wall covered with feedback from participants at London consultation workshop.
Understanding Voices officially launched in September 2019 at a public symposium on ‘Hearing Voices: What do we need to know?’ in Newcastle upon Tyne. We consider the site to be a work in progress, and we’re currently thinking about ways we might improve it in the future – for example, by translating some of the key sections and producing easy-read versions of the downloadable PDFs.
If you have time to spare, and you hear voices or support someone who does, we’d love it if you could tell us what you think about the current version of Understanding Voices by filling in this online survey. Your feedback will be crucial in helping us shape our future plans for the site.
We look forward to hearing from you!